Most citygoers love Uber, but taxi drivers can’t stand the ride-sharing app. The company has successfully “disrupted” the taxi industry, put drivers out of business, and led to mass protests in the United States and Europe. Now Uber’s new business model could put its own drivers out of business: The company has launched a pilot program in Pittsburgh, where self-driving cars ferry Uber passengers from stop to stop.
When Charles Kinsey, an unarmed behavioral technician assisting an autistic client, was shot by a North Miami Police officer last summer, critics immediately assailed the department’s training procedures. Those cries only intensified when news broke that North Miami had recently lost its state accreditation in part due to problems with training its cops.
By now you’ve woken up to the Black Mirror-worthy headlines: President-elect Donald Trump has spent all night angrily denying he paid Russian prostitutes to perform an R. Kelly-approved routine at a Moscow hotel while FSB spies secretly filmed blackmail material.
After a wave of protests, Ohio Gov. John Kasich last month vetoed a bill that would have banned abortions in Ohio after six weeks — a period before many women even know they’re pregnant. Kasich received a brief round of applause before turning around and signing a 20-week abortion ban. Anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life still applauded Kasich’s decision, stating the “20-week ban was nationally designed to be the vehicle to end abortion in America.”
If 2016 was bad for the United States, it was far worse for Haiti. The island nation had never really recovered from the 2010 earthquake when Matthew swept through, claiming more than a thousand lives and leaving approximately 175,000 Haitians homeless and another 800,000 in immediate need of food assistance, according to the United Nations. An electoral crisis left the country essentially without a president until last week, when Jovenel Moïse, a banana farmer and associate of former President Michel Martelly, took office. A third of Haitians are out of work, and roughly 9,600 suspected cholera cases have turned up since the hurricane.
Just so we’re clear, Marco Rubio is, by his own admission, not a scientist. He might actually be a large, brain-eating amoeba infecting the South Florida water supply. But whether he’s a living human senator or single-celled malignant disease, he sure talks like someone who knows next to nothing about the environment. He once blamed Miami’s flooding on “higher sea levels or whatever may be happening” and has said throughout his career that he doesn’t think human-made climate change is real.
In November, 71 percent of Florida voters backed legal medical marijuana. In Miami Beach, the approval rating was nearly 80 percent. So it’s bizarre that the very next day, the city voted to block dispensaries from the island for at least four months. Commissioner Ricky Arriola, who sponsored the move, says he simply wants to hit pause to allow the city more time to decide where distributors can operate.
As far as bank robberies go, a holdup at Brickell’s Navy Federal Credit Union yesterday afternoon was remarkably chill. A bald man in a neat sports coat calmly told a teller he had a bomb and then watched her fill a pink envelop with cash. Then, as his Uber driver streamed…
Stephen Bittel, a billionaire real-estate developer from Miami Beach, would like to lead the Florida Democratic Party. Most Miami Democrats see no issue with that. Bittel has been donating money to political campaigns for years and has helped prop up politicians such as U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The surfboard bobbed in the rolling waves off Huntington Beach, its fins facing toward the darkening sky. At first, the other surfers — at least a dozen of them, all soaking up the last bit of sunlight that late Sunday afternoon — didn’t notice. Then the yelling began. “Hey!” came…
Miamians adore Moonlight, the Barry Jenkins-directed paean to growing up poor, black, and gay in the Liberty City projects, because it truly gets Miami. Take a scene near the end, when the main character, Chiron, drives his long-lost love interest, Kevin, down Biscayne Boulevard and Kevin mentions he doesn’t have a car. Chiron is aghast — life without a car in Miami must be hell, he opines.
On a sweltering September morning last year, Adrian Henriquez and five friends hopped onto a yacht he’d chartered and set out for an afternoon cruise on Biscayne Bay. The group planned to shoot footage for an upcoming music video. Shortly after the luxury yacht left the Miami Beach Marina, one of the six passengers began smoking a cigar. But the seemingly innocuous display sent their captain, Robert Nobles, into a rage. That’s when, the passengers say, Nobles “became agitated, belligerent, and aggressive.”
In addition to tearing apart communities and undermining public respect for cops, police brutality is really effing expensive. When an officer punches someone who doesn’t deserve it, taxpayers can be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements and legal fees.
Esteban Marcelo Guzman-Santiago, of Fort Lauderdale, received death wishes on Facebook after users thought he was the gunman who opened fire at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
After yesterday’s tragic mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Florida’s political leaders offered their “thoughts and prayers” while doing absolutely nothing to address the nation’s gun-control issues.
Had there been more guns at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Sarasota state Sen. Greg Steube says, today’s tragic shooting might have been prevented. So he’s sticking by a bill he filed December 9 that would allow Floridians to openly carry guns in Sunshine State airports.
Esteban Santiago has been identified as the shooter who opened fire at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, according to NBC News.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office has confirmed five people are dead in a shooting in Terminal 2 at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Few issues unite Miamians across the political spectrum like the consistently frustrating, for-pay express lanes running north-south on I-95. Some critics claim the lanes kill people. Others say they let rich people pay to drive without traffic. But everyone can agree that few things are more infuriating that sitting in four lanes of dead-still traffic while two perfectly usable lanes sit empty across a makeshift lane barrier.
Florida legislators have long fought efforts to expand gambling. But apparently, their steadfast morals vanish when it comes to daily fantasy sports websites such as the controversial FanDuel and DraftKings. Once again, a lawmaker has filed a bill to make daily fantasy sports sites – in which people bet real money on real athletes in real time – fully exempt from state gambling regulations.
A little more than a year ago, activist Marleine Bastien stood outside on a clear December day, waving signs in front of the headquarters of Fanm Ayisyen nan Miyami, her Little Haiti-based women’s rights organization. The group was demanding one thing from the City of Miami: Slow the rapidly snowballing pace of gentrification in the historically working-class Caribbean neighborhood.
The West Perrine community where Jamar Rollins lived is still reeling from his December 30 shooting death at the hands of Miami-Dade County Police officers. Though MDPD says Rollins pointed a gun at cops before he was shot last month, eyewitnesses contend that Rollins’ hands were raised and that he did not own a gun. (A gun was recovered from the scene, police say.)
